More and more Westerners are moving to Russia, disappointed with the moral decay of the West, attracted by the Christian values of Russian society, pro-Kremlin propaganda claims.
NEWS: The number of people from countries deemed unfriendly who have expressed a desire to move to Russia, as supporters of traditional spiritual and moral values, is impressive. This is the conclusion of the Swiss newspaper Tages Anzeiger regarding migration from the West to the Russian Federation.
Starting August 2024, Moscow is promoting the so-called “shared values visa”. Citizens of unfriendly countries (including the USA, the UK, Canada, Australia, and all EU member states except Hungary and Slovakia) can apply. The publication notes that 1,156 applications had been submitted by June. The countries with the highest number of most applications are Germany (224), Latvia (126), and the USA (99).
“For a country with a population of 146 million, this is not a large number. But it is an impressive figure if we take into account the fact that Russia is subject to sanctions, there are no direct flights from Western countries, and transferring assets to Russia requires great effort. People do not come to Russia because it is a paradise, but because they have lost trust in the West”, the article states.
Earlier, the spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, said that citizens of Western countries have expressed a desire to move to Russia. According to her, residents of NATO member states want to settle in the Russian Federation in order to protect their loved ones from the current policy of the West, which is contrary to traditional values.
NARRATIVES: 1. Westerners are fleeing their countries to find traditional values in Russia. 2. The West is morally decaying and has no future, unlike Russia.
PURPOSE: To legitimize the Russian authoritarian regime by depicting it as a defender of traditional values. To undermine trust in Western democracies. To draw public attention away from Russia's internal and external problems (war, sanctions, emigration).
Fact: The “shared value visa” program is a Russian initiative with insignificant results
WHY THE NARRATIVES ARE FALSE: The original article published by Tages Anzeiger is titled “Bizarre propaganda move: Russia lures disillusioned Westerners with visas”. critically analyzing this Russian initiative. The pro-Kremlin media completely leaves out the critical nature of the Swiss analysis and presents only the fragments that seem to support the Kremlin narrative, distorting the meaning and context of the original source. There is no mention that the Swiss newspaper calls the initiative “bizarre propaganda”.
The actual numbers reveal the small scale of the phenomenon: 1,156 applications in 10 months for a country with 146 million inhabitants accounts for merely 0.0008% of Russia’s population. By contrast, research conducted by the Prague Process, an organization specializing in monitoring migration, estimates that between 700,000 and 1.2 million Russians left the country in the first year of the conflict. While Russian propaganda focuses on a few hundred Westerners who would like to move to Russia (they have only submitted one online application so far), the demographic figures paint a completely different picture, marked by the massive exodus of Russian intellectuals to the West – tens of thousands of IT professionals, journalists, activists and academics, while hundreds of thousands of Russians have fled the country to avoid mobilization. Russia is also facing a dramatic decline in birthrates and a rise in mortality rates, which exacerbate the existing demographic crisis.
The Swiss publication identifies the categories of people attracted by the program as “ultraconservative and disillusioned”, many of whom are “economically backward”. This is not a mass migration, but rather people with marginal views and/or economic problems, which contradicts the narrative of attracting the most valuable citizens from the West.
The concept of “traditional values” promoted by the Kremlin is an ideological construct intended to mask the authoritarian nature of the Putin regime. In fact, contemporary Russia is characterized by systemic corruption, ranking 141 out of 180 in the Corruption Perceptions Index, religious repression, manifested, for instance, by the ban on Jehovah’s Witnesses and a series of restrictions on Protestant churches, the partial decriminalization of domestic violence, and one of the highest rates of alcohol consumption in the world.
Unlike traditional Western immigration programs, which rely on professional skills or investment, the “shared values visa” does not require language tests, investment or special professional qualifications. Even the Swiss newspaper notes that “people are not fleeing to Russia because it is a paradise, but because they have lost faith in the West”, confirming that the program relies on exploiting specific grievances in Western societies.
The current campaign is reminiscent of Soviet propaganda during the Cold War, when the USSR promoted the image of a “socialist paradise” to attract Western sympathizers, although the reality was completely different, and those who moved to the Soviet Union often faced deep disappointment. Russian propaganda fails to mention the severe restrictions on civil and political freedoms, the law on “foreign agents” and other instruments of repression.
BACKGROUND: The Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, said that a significant number of citizens of Western countries, especially from NATO member states, have expressed a desire to move to the Russian Federation. According to her, people are seeking to settle in Russia to protect their families and loved ones from the current policies of the West, which are perceived as contrary to the traditional values promoted by Russia. This trend reflects a search for an environment considered more stable and closer to their moral principles, Zakharova noted. In August 2024, the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman announced that citizens of other countries can turn to Russia if they are persecuted in their own countries due to adherence to traditional values. At the same time, the Kremlin started promoting videos in the West about the “Russian paradise” and the traditional values promoted in Russia.
